Random Thoughts

Yesterday I read a blog that was written by a man whose wife had cancer. She had cancer, and then died. She hadn't even finished her treatments yet when, according to her husband, she died in her sleep from "complications".

I had to shake my head. Not the "what a pity" kind of shake my head, but the "shocking reality" kind of shake my head. For the first time ever the thought of dying in my sleep didn't sound peaceful or desirable at all. "I want to go peacefully in my sleep". "I just want to go to sleep and never wake up". You've heard people say that, or have even said it yourself. Not me, not anymore.

It just occured to me that going in your sleep means going alone. No holding hands, no goodbyes. Granted, you're not alone for long, but still.

It also means not being present for the big event. Sleeping through your death and waking up in heaven? Sounds boring. You only get to die once, don't you want to know what it's like? It'd be like being put under general anesthesia during childbirth. Kind of a momentous occasion don't you think?

So, there you have it, my final wishes: Wake me up!

Shouldering the Weight of Love

When I was two, my parents found themselves in financial straits. This wasn't hard to do.  They were single income, living in California and had  three children under the age of three. 

So when something like Christmas rolled around my mom would have no choice but to get very creative.  One year, that meant homemade Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls for me.  But these weren't just any Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls;  they sported a yarn-do unlike any other. Green. 1970's green. If I remember right, it was leftover yarn from a green sweater that mom had knit for my brother. Aren't they awesome?!

As you may suppose, our being needy didn't escape the attention of the neighbors and the good folks at church so these dolls were not the only present I got to open that year. In fact, my mother says that in addition to Ann and Andy...I scored eight other baby dolls that Christmas morning.  That's a lot of loot for one little girl, and apparently it was too much of a good thing.  As the story goes, I surveyed the room after all the presents were opened and did whatever reckoning toddlers do...and it all added up to one thing for me....WAAAHAAAHAA!!! Too many babies! How was I going to take care of all of them?

I've found myself in overwhelming life situations recently that, although I have no memory of my breakdown that Christmas morning 39 years ago, must have been what it felt like to feel responsible for all those babies. More than once I've felt hopelessly inadequate to minister to all the sisters in our HUGE Relief Society. I'm not sure how long God wants me to stay here and be in charge of this organization...but I sure hope His grace tempers the resulting side-effects of my not-knowing-what-I'm doing.  

To all the women that I have failed or whom I will soon fail,  I hope you know that I'm really only two years old and partial to rag dolls.

But there's a flip side to this story.  The flip side has more to do with receiving love as opposed to giving it. It happened as I sat on the end of my bed one evening in 2009, awaiting a PET/CT scan the next day that would reveal more about the cancer that my doctor had detected in my lungs.

I sat there on my bed sobbing, inconsolable. Not because of the test or the fear of it's results, but because I knew my ward and my family would be holding a special fast for me the following day. I felt the gravity of being the object of someone else's sacrifice. Someone else's willingness to be uncomfortable. It was more than I could handle. I did not know how to accept all that love. It was in some ways, simply too much. Too heavy.

Can you imagine...how are we going to handle feeling all of God's love when we are finally in His presence? I think of the people in the scriptures that fall down as if they were dead. That are "exceedingly astonished" when they feel His love. I'm convinced that we have only sampled His love for us in minute, manageable portions. Someday it's going to go right through us down to the marrow of our bones and change every ounce of every cell in our body. It will be glorious and we will never be the same. Will our old selves even be recognizable? Questions.

Where Will I Be in 20 - One - Three?

In 1995 we purchased our first home. A charming brick bungalo that definitely fell under the "they don't make 'em like they used to" category. As excited as you think I would have been to finally stop renting and move into my own cute little home, I was actually surprised to discover I had an allergy that I didn't even know existed. I discovered that I was allergic... to debt. Everyone would ask me how excited I was about buying a house and I would look at them like they were crazy. How could I be excited when I owed someone so much money?! So much money that it was going to take me 30 years to pay them back?

So naturally, when I later heard someone on the radio claim that anyone, ANYONE, could be totally debt free in 15 years, I was interested. Not interested enough to buy their product or their program, but interested enough to delve into the world of finance deep enought to figure out how to do it myself. We had three children at the time, three years old and younger, and only one car. I knew that car number two (and hence even MORE debt) was imminent. But I still full heartedly believed that anyone, ANYONE, could be totally debt free in 15 years. Once I was pretty sure I had figured out how to do it, because I'm me, I had to have a catchy slogan to go with it. "Debt Free in 20 -one -zero" didn't do anything for me, but "Debt Free in 20 -one - three" rhymed and kind of got me excited. (It also gave me an additional three year cushion, which sounded less strident to less-strident little me.)

Since then, my husband has been laid-off three times, we've moved clear across the country and back, bought and sold three houses, all of my kids have needed braces and I've had cancer. More than once that slogan, although never forgotten, was given the ol' que sara sara. Nice idea...but not gonna happen. So I thought...

Much to my surprise, even through all of those major detours, the debt free dream is not lost. We now find ourselves in the position to actually fulfill that goal and be totally and completely debt free in 20-1-3. No doubt, it is going to make for a tight three years, but do-able ones nonetheless.

Interestingly, I still remember where I was when I heard that radio broadcast. I was driving southbound on I-15, I had just passed through Bluffdale and was about to crest the point of the mountain. I find it fitting that I was going up hill, especially now as I recognize that not only has it been an uphill battle at times, but that these last three years will be the uphill-iest.

I'm not sure anything worthwhile is easy. The short quote says: "If you avoid difficult things, great things will avoid you." The long quote says: "Truth and untruth travel together, side by side. Light and darkness both offer themselves to the seeker after truth, one to bless, the other to destroy mankind. Whenever a man sets out to seek truth, he will for a time be overtaken by evil. No seeker after truth is, therefore, ever free from temptation, from evil power. This is an eternal law."

Believe me, ever since I became aware of how close we were to reaching our goal, my shopping lust, I mean list, has sky rocketed! I have the galloping green gimmies like no body's business! If only I were as allergic to debt now as I was then. Unfortunately, I have developed quite a tolerance. That mean old devil. He sure knows how to rope (or flaxen cord) us in. But I'm so close to the crest of that hill, I have to, ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO make it over...if for anything else than to prove to myself that I'm not a complete nincompoop.

Musings from a Relief Society President

Sometimes you have to get off the couch to look on the bright side. Sometimes you have to take a number to have a mental breakdown. "Get in line honey!"

Dinner is Served!

Whatta ya do when it's taco night but there is no ground round to be found? You have cheese, you have lettuce, you even have tortillas...but no meat. No meat and NO desire whatsoever to get back into your car one more stinkin' time and drive to the store. (I have chauffering issues...can you tell?) Well, if you're lucky, and somewhat brave, you can pull the last turkey burger out of the freezer, along with the two well-meaning but not so well-desired veggie burgers and throw them all in a skillet with a can of chili con carne. Simmer and stir.


In the meantime, you better start thinking up ways to spin this to the kids...cause it ain't pretty.




Plan A: Label it gourmet and insinuate it's a Guy Fieri creation. Who could pass up Guy Fieri fare? He's fat AND cool, way more so than the Kool-Aid man. They're not even in the same league...real and pretend status aside.


Plan B: Start doing that funny bit by comedien Don Friesen about the poor kids in China. Sharpen up your Chinese accent so that they laugh so hard they cry. The tears will naturally blur their vision just long enough to get the cheese and lettuce to cover the....um...filling.

Plan C: You do pray at dinnertime right?

Much to my surprise, with no tricks employed whatsoever, everyone just sat down and ate it with no questions asked. UNHEARD of in my family. No whining at all? Is this what they've wanted all along??? Really??? Baffled...yes. Monumentally baffled. But in the end, just counting my blessings. One more family dinner down...17,000 more to go.

Et tu, Rubus?

When one eats berries in a bowl, regardless of the genus of berries being devoured, one is best served when the last berry consumed is of the sweetest nature. Bitter berries are only tolerable when there is at least one more berry of significant sweetness left to cleanse the palate, thus leaving the partaker of berries quite delighted and satisfied.

Hence the majesty and genius of pie...where all fruit is made equal, resting on the dulcitude of fellow berries. All being exalted together by sugar and crust, crust and sugar. Amen and forever.

Nothing Comes from Nothing

You might think the phrase "nothing comes from nothing" is attributed to Rogers and Hammerstein and "The Sound of Music". I know I thought that, but interestingly enough...it is actually comes from Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher. When he said it it sounded more like this: ex nihilo nihil fit. That must have been profound, centuries ago, but really all it means is...I am bored! Which leads me to ask....is it possible to create a blog out of boredom? Can I turn 45 minutes of down time at work into an essay of any worth? Probably not, but I'm gonna try! Yesterday I was sick. Well, I've been sick for about a week now, but yesterday I got sick of being sick. Sleep deprivation caught up with me and viola! At 11 am yesterday I begged off work and went home to be alone with my Nyquil. Can I just say, I LOVE Nyquil. It's the only good thing about being sick.

Eternal Calculus

This post is going to be quite different than my last several posts. My last few posts all started and ended with a blank text box. There was so much to write, but no way to write it. Fortunately, a picture is worth a thousand words and some old albums have come to the rescue. But before I get to my slideshow, perhaps an explanation is in order.

Two days ago marked a year since my last chemo treatment. Hence, I have been growing my hair back now, for 367 days. That is, theoretically I have been growing my hair back for 367 days. T h e o r e t i c a l l y. Realistically...it hasn't been going so well.

It's been months now since I've started to worry. My chemo buddies all have short, but rather full heads of hair already. I have short, rather thin and transparent hair on my head. I have long since done the dreaded google search that went something like "hair always grow back after chemo" to find out that about 2% of women will not get their hair back. I'm holding on to the hope that since it took me a while as a baby to grow hair, that it will just take me a while as an adult to do the same. See:





this is how much hair I had when I was born












this is how much gas I had when I was born (isn't mom pretty?)














this is me 5 months later (isn't grandma pretty?)















this is me a year after I was born bald








I stuff this down every morning and quickly groom so as to move my mind on to something else as swiftly as possible. Layers and layers of this angst had built up enough that I knew it was getting pretty close to the surface and that eventually I would snap, slump into a corner of my bedroom in a pile of tears, and refuse to come out ever again.

I was partially right. One day I did snap. But I was in the shower, and I had just reached up to wash my hair when the thought of "what's it matter" and the thought of getting out of the shower to see me in the mirror again both collided. Let's just say...it's not the first time I've sobbed in the shower.

So there you have it. This is not a pity party for me. This blog has never been about that. This is for all the times I've dropped in on someone else's cancer blog and felt not so alone when I was done there. Maybe there's someone else out there that's 40 and looks like 80 and now we're soul sisters.

The Lord is reportedly counting the hairs on our heads. I am counting the days since chemo. I've never really liked math.. but this has got to be the worst story problem ever.

Getting your June Cleaver on...

My husband works so hard. He commutes to his full time job every day, an hour and 15 minutes each way (that's when traffic is good), through the burdened urban spectacle we call the Wasatch Front. Yicky. His commute in Maryland was somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes each way, and it took him through not only a forest but also rolling green hills that were speckled with gorgeous mansions and the occasional mounted hunting ensemble, complete with hounds, in pursuit of some poor little fox. Seriously, they still do that in MD. (poor things must get tired of golf and yachting)

When he gets home, 65% of the time he has freelance illustrations waiting for him. Which means he spends about two more hours at work in his basement. If that isn't enough, we have a rental property, which makes the occasional demand on his time as well.

So...when he comes downstairs to our "den", where I am trying to blog or read or whatever, and turns on Spyro Gyra so loud that I can't hear myself think........ that's ok. That's really ok. What did Julie Beck say last conference? Something like "the Lord needs women to be women, not babies". Yeah...something like that. So, I'll just turn off my computer, give him a kiss on the forehead, and go find something I can do for him...like iron his shirts or wash his car.

(but really...Spyro Gyra????)

My Reset Button

At the end of my cancer treatments, the nurses all said something like: "Now you need to go on a nice vacation." I remember one nurse saying specifically: "Now you need to find a rock on a beach somewhere and sit on it." I didn't take their advice very seriously, besides, my family had been doing without me for almost a year...like I was going to abandon them for one more day.

So, with both feet eager and ready, I jumped neck deep back into life as rapidly as possible. But something wasn't right. As time went on, and emotional struggles multiplied, I realized it was going to take something more than both feet to get my life back. But I didn't know what.

I pushed onward, only to find it more and more difficult to cope with the simplest things. After a while I noticed that everytime I learned of the loss of a friend or even a stranger, to cancer, things became progressively worse. I got to the point that I would become angry if I went to my survivor support group and found out that someone's remission had ended and they were back in the fight. It felt like for every person that lost their life, I had to be even more perfect, more effective and more capable to earn my right as survivor. It was in this state of white-knuckling survival mode, that a vacation we had planned and cancelled and planned and cancelled again, actually not only survived the planning stage, but magically came to fruition.

Our vacation was set way back in the mountains, just north of Sundance. BYU runs a family camp called Aspen Grove that we've gone to before and that I've always loved, but I never knew it would save my life. But after only two days, I felt the old me finally returning. I used to look at pictures of me before cancer, and wonder: "who's that? she looks so familiar". But now, even though I definitely don't look like the girl in the pictures, I can claim that girl as myself.

Ever try that mental exercise where you imagine yourself in a beautiful, peaceful setting, like a beach? I did that a lot when treatments got hard, and the place I imagined was always Aspen Grove. Maybe that has something to do with why being there had such an instant, palpable impact on my well-being. Or maybe humans have a reset button, like a lot of electronic devices. If that's the case, I know where mine is...ten miles up Provo Canyon.